Journal

Long Exposure Settings to Capture Beautiful Waterfalls

In this landscape photography vlog, I take a trip to one of the most famous waterfalls in Iceland, if not the world, Skogafoss in the south of the country.

To avoid the crowds and get the best light, I arrive at Skogafoss around 10:00 at night. Even at that time of the day there are still about 30 cars in the carpark and around 40 people exploring the base of the waterfall. So I took a walk up the stars to the right of the waterfall to a platform where you get spectacular views of the area from above the waterfall.

You aren’t allow to fly drones in the area, but with stunning views from the platform, I didn’t need to get the drone out. After a couple of attempts to set up only to be interrupted by rain, the weather held off long enough to set the camera up for my first shot.

I tried out the polariser and ended up keeping it on the Nikon 24-70mm lens as it was giving me a nice effect cutting out the glare on the surface of the water and making the rocks darker. I was going to use the Lee Filter 6 stop, Little Stopper but the reduced light from the clouds and the f-stop of 11 that I was using gave me a shutter speed of 2.5 secs. This was perfect as it was taking around 2.5 secs for the water to fall from the top to the bottom of the waterfall. This was going to give me the silky smooth effect on the waterfall that I wanted.

After capturing that first shot, I explored the area a little more to find a few other composition of this gorgeous area.